Engaging, Enabling, and Motivating Families and Diverse Trails Users

If you build it, who will come? Picture a typical trail user. Picture the person you’d see coming out the doors of the “hiking gear" store or modeling in their catalogue. No need to spell it out, while evolving, it likely a white, affluent adult with an "active-lifestyle" body-type.

Now it’s time to broaden that trail demographic. We need to find more effective ways to cast a broader net. Some of the target groups include: families with young children; people with more limited economic means and mobility, different ethnic groups and different levels of fitness and abilities that may not currently fit the current image of a trail user. Going forward, this will be a key to planning better trails, promoting more support of trails and building a broader constituency of people who regularly visit and enjoy trails. We want to find ways to promote a more rewarding experience for ALL groups, facilitate more diverse, equitable access, make more people feel welcomed, safe and motivated—to feel that trails are for them too. This should be key to the ways we plan and design trails and trails create better access mechanisms that encourage and enable more diverse visitation. Branding and messaging to make trails more appealing and accessible is also part of the picture.

This webinar will look at ways to expand the universe of trail visitors, considering planning, design, and messaging and discuss how welcoming more groups can build a stronger base of support by engaging a more diverse constituency of trails enthusiasts. The webinar presents four experts representing a diverse range of backgrounds and perspectives.

Bob Searns will serve as the moderator for this webinar.

Learning Objectives:

• Planning trails with a broader constituency in mind
• Promoting a more rewarding experience on the trail to the broader constituency
• Branding and messaging to make trails more appealing and accessible

Trail Competencies

• Project Planning and Design

• Program Administration
• • Education and Public Outreach

Relevant Trail Types

General. All trail types are relevant.